Waiting for AI to finish is uncomfortable. I found I feel better and get more done when I stay with that discomfort without acting on it. When, instead of rushing to open my fourth concurrent agent or reply to another Slack ping, I just stay right there, present. Maybe I’ll close my eyes for a moment and focus on the breath, feel the weight of the body, or maybe I’ll stretch a little bit. It makes the work feel more meaningful to me, and not as wearing.
Prompting is so addictive. It only takes one command, no matter how sloppy, for my LLM to conjure a multi-file change promising to solve a difficult problem. It can be such a rush, that on some days I find myself cycling between 4 agents at once.
It has a weird effect on me: The first hour is fun, but then I get tired very quickly. I stop paying attention to details, I resist reviewing the code the AI wrote, and I start asking, “How quickly can I get the next thing done?” much more than “Should I even do it?”
Writing code is no longer the bottleneck. Our focused attention is. Producing code has gotten so easy that I can open 10 PRs with a single prompt that takes a minute to write. But reviewing those PRs would likely require some days of intense thinking from an experienced maintainer – we’ve seen that a lot in open-source repositories. In my experience, reviewing AI-generated code requires more effort than reviewing human-produced code.
I love working with Dennis Snell. His PRs are the best I’ve seen in my 20-year career: they’re driven by a specific need, thoroughly documented, easy to understand, clear about other approaches, and built to deliver value. LLMs are… not Dennis. AI PRs can be verbose, underdocumented, touch unrelated code, may not build, and sometimes they don’t even solve the problem.
Don’t get me wrong – LLMs are useful. Their strengths can make us stronger. But LLMs aren’t perfect, and their weaknesses can make us weaker too.
We only have faster code generators; we don’t have faster brains. We can build everything we imagine, and it’s so important that we don’t just build anything. Switching context, understanding new ideas, and doing your best work are all limited resources. You only have so much of them each day. Don’t waste them! Focused attention is scarcer and more valuable than, I think, ever.
Less is unintuitive, and yet it works. Fill less of your work time with doing, and you’ll ship more work (e.g. Kanban’s Slack time). Commit to fewer projects, and you’ll ship more projects (e.g. Kanban’s WIP limits). Write a more specific ad that appeals to fewer people, and you’ll drive more sales (e.g. Ogilvy on Advertising).
When AI makes you wait and you find that moment of silence unbearable, when there’s this pressure to be productive, know that there are two of us. And if that pressure leaves you tired, see if you can just lean into that feeling without acting on it. Just breathe. Just focus on the sensations in your body. Give yourself the gift of that moment. Your well-being matters more than any project. And the projects may be better off, too.
Stay well!
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